SOMETHING that amazes me about Jamie Neale is not that he was lost in the Blue Mountains for 12 nights, that he wondrously survived off bush tucker and water trickling from streams, or that he didn’t freeze to death, but that he is a 19-year-old that left the house (or youth hostel in his case) without his mobile phone.
His father even admitted to news crews something along the lines of it being rare that a bloke his age would be out in the world without a mobile in his back pocket.
Walking around the shops in Liverpool the other day I overheard some little boys, probably aged about 9 or 10, talking about what they needed to buy. They had several shopping bags between them so where they got the money from is another question, but I thought it was saying something about the perceived necessities of kids these days when I heard one tell the other that he ‘needed’ to buy a mobile phone, just like a mother might need to buy toilet paper for her family or bread and milk for the weekend.
I got my first hand-me-down mobile when I was about 16, and had to buy my own pre-paid sim card and save up for credit. I think I was among the first batch of my friends at school to get one and looking back, I most certainly did not ‘need’ it, I think I just used it to play snake on.
But now, only a mere several years later, you see primary school-aged children getting about with their ears attached to their mobiles.
Have we become mobile dependant, obsessed, mad?
Is it a generational thing? I have finally convinced my mum not to leave the house without her mobile. Only problem now is that although she takes it out, she forgets to turn it on.
If I leave the house without my mobile I feel naked. Even to walk the dog, I will take what I regard as the basic essentials: house keys and my mobile. And maybe $5 for a coffee or for something I see along the way. My argument to myself is that I carry my phone at all times for safety reasons. I have my local police station’s number in my phone in case something happens. So I tell myself.
But to be honest I think it’s a fear of missing out. What if someone calls me to catch up for a beer? What if someone rings to ask me to a party? Lunch? Dinner? What if I’ve won the lotto, and I miss the call?
I’ve often wondered what we all did before mobile phones. I think the answer is that we would all be on time.
I think people have become less punctual since mobiles became the norm.
If someone is running late for an appointment, it’s now a case of, ‘oh, I’ll just text them,’ or, ‘she’ll be right, I’ll ring her and change the time.’
Before this luxury (is it a luxury?), we all had no choice but to be on time and to stick to our word. But now we have an excuse for being rudely late.
A few weekends ago, oh hang on, I just got a text, right, back to my story, a few weekends ago I dropped my phone and shattered the screen, hence leaving me without it for a while. I realised that in the hours it took me to go to the shopping centre and look at replacement phones, I started to panic. I was getting really agitated and nervous, slight cold sweats, and feeling really anxious. There was something missing from my back pocket and I really didn’t like it, I felt like I’d forgotten to put my undies on and it was a windy day.
That afternoon (it hadn’t even been 24 hours) when I did put my sim card into my new phone, the abusive messages started flowing from my friends: ‘Where are you?’, ‘What are you doing?’, ‘Are you OK, what’s happened?’.
And I found out later that I had in fact missed out on something: they went out for lunch and because I was mobile phone-less, I didn’t know.
If this were 10 years ago, would life have been less social, or just more organised?
How has your mobile phone changed your life? Is it for the better or worse?
Could YOU go 24 hours without your mobile phone? Why? Why not?
Rebecca.richardson@fairfax media.com.au
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